I knock anyway. Brisk and cheerful, because I’ve never once in my life let a sign tell me what to do.
From inside: a grumbled, muffled sound that could be “come in” as easily as “go away and don’t come back.”
Undeterred, I push open the door.
Dom’s old room is a time capsule of adolescence.
Band posters cover nearly every inch of wall space—some familiar, some so faded I can barely make out the names. Metallica. Guns N’ Roses. Something called Rage Against the Machine that sounds appropriately angry for teenage Dominic. A shelf of dog-eared paperbacks lines one wall, their spines cracked from repeated reading. Motorcycle magazines in a tottering pile. A set of free weights in the corner, probably untouched for years but still gleaming like someone’s been polishing them. A leather jacket draped over a desk chair, the leather cracked and softened with age.
But what really catches my eye is a row of framed awards on the narrow shelf beneath the window. Five of them, lined up with careful precision that seems wildly at odds with the organized chaos of everything else in this room. They gleam—no dust, no fingerprints, glass recently wiped. These aren’t relics from Dom’s teenage years. The frames are modern, sleek black metal, and the certificates inside bear dates from the last few years.
Northeast Regional Flair Bartending Championship — First Place.
Maine State Mixology Competition — Gold Medal.
New England Craft Cocktail Invitational — Best Original Recipe.
Then my gaze moves to the bed.
And Dom.
Clearly, I just woke him up. His hair an absolute disaster—black shot through with silver, sticking up in every direction like he lost a fight with a hurricane. He’s shirtless, blanket pooled at his waist, tattoo sleeves on full display. The ink catches the weak morning light, swirling patterns of black and gray that tell stories I’ll probably never know. His chest is lean and defined, the kind of muscle that comes from actual work rather than gym vanity.
I’m momentarily distracted.
Okay, more than momentarily. The man looks like he was carved out of marble by someone with very specific aesthetic preferences and absolutely no sense of modesty. The tattoos only make it worse—or better, depending on your perspective—tracing patterns across his collarbones, down his arms, disappearing beneath the rumpled blanket in ways that make my brain short-circuit.
Stop staring at his chest, Phoenix. It’s rude.
I force my gaze away from the extremely distracting landscape of Dominic Romano’s torso.
My attention lands on the wall above the headboard.
And that’s when I see it.
A poster.
A massive, unmistakable promotional poster from myAlly’s Worldera. Younger me, probably ten or eleven, with a bright smile and the show’s signature logo splashed across the bottom in garish pink and purple letters. The colors have faded slightly with age, but it’s clearly been well-preserved. Carefully hung. Maybe even re-mounted at some point, given how straight the edges are despite the obvious wear on everything else in this room.
The silence that follows is enormous.
Dom follows my gaze. I watch the color drain from his face in real time—a fascinating process that takes approximately two seconds before flooding back in a spectacular rush of red that reaches the tips of his ears.
I stare at the poster.
Then at Dom.
Then back at the poster.
My brain processes this information with the speed of a computer trying to load a particularly large file. Dominic Romano—too-cool-for-school bartender with a criminal past—has a poster of me hanging above his bed.
A poster he has clearly kept and maintained for over a decade.
I should be creeped out. Should feel uncomfortable, violated, all the things I usually feel when confronted with evidence of male attention I didn’t ask for.
Instead, I think I’m…flattered?
And also amused. Deeply, profoundly amused.
